Last week I took Thursday and Friday off from work, which meant Wendsday night I was able to drive up to WPI to attend the SFS Officer Elections. As I set out, a rather significant snowstorm struck New England, making the drive up a reasonably exciting experience, and giving me the opportunity to conduct slide control, spin control, and emergency-stopping-in-slippery-environments drills. It was a lot of fun, and I managed to make it to Worcester in only 20 minutes more than it would normally take me. Its always nice to know that I can handle my car in extremely suboptimal conditions.

I got to hang out at WPI that night, talking at great length with the Wedgerats about various games, including Skies of Arcadia and Craig's Star Wars Game. That was amusing, and led to some interesting revelations. I also gave nyren a hand installing his new motherboard, and ate mint chocolate cake. That qualifies as a very good night.

The next morning I slept until 1100, only to discover my windshield wiper had finally given up the ghost. I took a field trip to my local Volvo dealership and picked up new windshield wipers. I drove up to WPI and installed them right in the parking lot. It proved to be a bit more of a puzzle than I was expecting. Those blades aren't screwed on, they just snap into and out of place. I never knew that before.

I headed into the school for a bit to see if anybody was about. I ran into Pat there, who was heading off to a Zeugner lecture, so I decided to tag along. It was a lot of fun to sit in one of the Professor's lectures again (this one was on the 14 points), even if I hadn't done the reading (I rarely did it when I was taking the class for credit). I made a point of being as passive as possible, and got a chance to talk with him after class. He told me he was glad to see me, and next time I crash one of his lectures, to please answer some of his questions, because his class certainly wouldn't. So that was another good thing.

That evening I played a game of Imperium which I will probably discuss in a later entry, as it was very interesting.

Friday was the first day of Arisia '05, the Science Fiction/Fantasy convention I attended at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel. That evening I was able to attend a panel hosted by the Klingon Language Institute on why Klingons are far more popular than any other alien race in Star Trek history. I also got to attend a Filksing on Friday night (as I would on Saturday and Sunday nights).

On Saturday I played in kgola's RPG. It was an interesting experience which taught me two things:

Don't sign up for a six-hour game on Saturday afternoon

Don't ask me to "create a distraction" (I thought we learned this one after the leg-humping incident, but apparently word hasn't gotten around)

That said, the game was a lot of fun, although I seem to have adopted the name "Kore" at Arisia in much the same way I adopted "Max Largo" and "Norm" after previous games.

On Saturday evening it became clear that escape from Boston would not be possible. Fortunately, I had a backup plan already in place and operating. I set out that evening to the Legal Sea Foods just a block from the hotel to get a bowl of their glorious clam chowder (easily my favorite fish food). I got it to go and stumbled back through the now-abandon streets of Boston to the hotel, to sit on the Mezzanine and enjoy my meal with some Pepsi taken from the con suite. Shortly after I returned word came down that Governor Romney had declared a State of Emergency in the Commonwealth, and that we were not to leave the hotel, and that driving in the city was punishable by arrest. That night I stayed in the hotel to the sound of the wind whistling by the windows, as the sodium lights illuminated the air, now thick with snow, a sickly orange.

On Sunday I awoke to a still-white-out city, and wandered downstairs. The panel I intended to attend that morning had been cancelled (the host was unable to make it to the hotel), so I wandered off and joined a game being run by phoenix1701. I played for a fair chunk of the afternoon, horribly hijacking the party only to disappear two hours in to attend Professor Ciaraldi's play, Captions. The cast of the play were stuck in Worcester, forcing the Professor to present the play as a dramatic reading, which, although not as elegant as a proper play would be, sufficed to allow the audience to enjoy it and had a running time about on par with the actual production. Since the play took only 30 minutes, I returned to the RPG I had left to discover my cleverly laid plans had been abandon in favor of wandering south and giving the GM a case of schizophrenia. I reassumed my place and we carried on the adventure for some time and had great fun running about Middle-Earth.

Sunday afternoon I settled in for one last Filksing and then broke camp with ultimatepsi for the perilious voyage back to Lexington. Route 2 was interesting, but we made it home alive, and I was able to clear my car. Given the state of the highways, I elected to remain up north until the morning, as I had late shift at work on Monday. So I got up at 0600 and drove to Branford, stopping at two gas stations (the first was out of gas), and made it back home around 1000.